


semi-organized crime

by crashandcollapse (jiffyfetch)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, semi-organized crime au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:21:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiffyfetch/pseuds/crashandcollapse
Summary: "What do you do?" Enjolras asks after what feels like a century."I’m a painter." No one looks convinced. "And a thief. But that's more of a hobby."Grantaire's life is pretty shitty until he picks the wrong pocket and falls in with the les amis. Les amis and their politically-motivated criminal activity and their horribly radiant leader. His life is about to get a whole lot shittier.





	semi-organized crime

Grantaire becomes a thief out of boredom. He gets clean and gets itchy, learns to pick pockets because the adrenaline rush is the best thing he’s got right now. It isn't the healthiest coping mechanism, he knows, but it keeps him busy. 

He meets Courfeyrac when he swipes his phone. It's a stupid choice - the phone is two generations old and the screen has a few hairline cracks. He isn't going to make any money off of this. But he's been nursing a club soda at the bar and knows this is a dangerous game, knows he's minutes away from ordering a jack and coke. And the phone is just sitting there. 

He rarely bothers to pawn what he steals anyway, it isn’t about money. It’s about the rush that comes with taking something he shouldn’t. It’s the game he likes to play, trying to piece together someone else’s life with only an object or two. He likes to snoop and he likes to imagine, and he’s stopped feeling guilty about letting himself into other people's’ lives a long time ago.

He takes the phone to the bathroom, locks himself in the stall. It takes three tries to guess the password – he took Courfeyrac's wallet too, and guesses first his birthday, second his address, and third 537264. He flicks through the camera app, expecting the usual glimpses into a stranger’s life. Instead there are 36 photos of blueprints for different buildings in Paris. Grantaire hums while he thinks. 

Courfeyrac is leaning against the sink when he exits the stall. Grantaire hands him his phone and wallet silently. Courfeyrac raises his eyebrows. 

"What are the blueprints for?" Grantaire asks.

"You're a good thief," says Courfeyrac, which isn't an answer but then again Grantaire wasn't really expecting one. 

"Not really if you saw me take it."

"I'm a better thief," the other man shrugs. "I'm Courfeyrac."

"I know," replies Grantaire, "I looked at your license."

Courfeyrac spins his phone slowly in his palm, a gesture that has the rhythm of a habit. "How'd you get around the passcode so quickly?"

"I didn't." This isn’t the first time Grantaire’s been mistaken for a hacker. His life would probably be a lot more fun if it wasn’t a misconception. 

Courfeyrac waits. 

Grantaire caves. "I guessed it. 537264. LESAMI."

"How do you know about that?" Courfeyrac seems a little out of breath.

Grantaire thinks maybe he's picked the wrong pocket. 

"There's a slip of paper in between the folds of your wallet. Says ‘Les Amis.’"

Courfeyrac pulls out the paper, as if he needs to check. As if he doesn't have it memorized. (Grantaire is sure he does.) He looks at the dots and squares drawn carefully on the page, looks at the absolute lack of letters. Looks at Grantaire again.

"It's a terrible code," is all Grantaire says. 

Or, it's all he plans to say. Courfeyrac has wonderfully expressive eyebrows, and Grantaire finds it difficult to shut up in the light of the other man’s silent questioning. Though shutting up has never really been one of Grantaire’s skills.

"A dice cipher is like. That's one of the first things that's going to come up when you google ‘secret code’. It would be better to just write it out in English. Hiding in plain sight and all that."

"How would that be better?" Courfeyrac asks.

Grantaire can't tell if the question is sincere or a test. He figures it doesn't really matter. 

"People will look past things they think they understand. A phrase on a piece of paper could be nothing. A code is obviously something important."

Courfeyrac chews on that for a second.

"Who are you?" he asks. 

"You can call me R."

"That's not a name."

"No it's not." Grantaire smiles. Courfeyrac surprises him by smiling back. 

"Come with me," he says. 

Courfeyrac takes him out the back, down several alleys, and into another bar. He nods to the bartender and makes a beeline to a back room. It's a tiny office, where a man with thick glasses sits wedged between filing cabinets and stacks of ledgers. 

"Ferre," Courfeyrac says by way of greeting, and perches on the desk. He nods at a rickety chair shoved in the corner. Grantaire has to climb over several crates of books to get to it.

"Who do you work for?" Courfeyrac asks as soon as he's sat down. 

Grantaire laughs. Both men frown at him. 

"If I’m working for someone they should fire me," he replies. "If I was serious I wouldn't have stuck around for you to find me and I certainly wouldn't have told you everything I did back there." 

"Our enemies are sloppy," says the man with the glasses, as if this is something that makes sense. 

"You'd do better to act like they're not," R can't stop himself from saying. He used to think his lack of a filter was due to infrequent sobriety, but he's starting to realize it's really more of a character flaw. 

"You give a lot of advice," Courfeyrac says. He’s not smiling anymore, and Grantaire wishes he would. He wishes even more that he didn’t want to impress this stranger so badly. But it’s been a long time since Grantaire’s met someone in Paris who he likes.

"You seem to need it." Grantaire usually tries not to be an asshole, he really does. 

The two men look at each other. 

"Okay," says the one with the glasses. He's talking to Courfeyrac, answering a question Grantaire didn't hear anyone ask. He picks up a phone, dials, hangs up on the third ring; the office is small enough that Grantaire can hear the other end of the line. 

The phone rings less than a minute later. 

"I'm on my way," says a voice, and then a click and the room returns to silence. 

They wait. 

Grantaire’s patience cracks after what he guesses is twelve minutes.

"I assume you're not going to tell me what's going on?"

Before either man can answer, the door swings open, right into Grantaire’s head. 

"Ow," he mutters angrily, rubbing his forehead and turning to glare at the man who's just entered. Only the breath leaves his body as he locks eyes with the most beautiful person he's ever seen. Golden hair and stormy eyes and Grantaire knows, he just knows, that this man could burn down Paris with a single match if he wanted to. 

"Sorry," Courfeyrac says, having the decency to look embarrassed. "We should have told you to move the chair before the door opened."

"Who is he?" the man asks. 

"Didn't give me a name, just said to call him R."

At that the man turns to look at Grantaire. Grantaire thinks he would do anything to keep those eyes on him, to be at the center of that steely, determined focus. 

"Why are you here?"

"Our hosts haven't deigned to share that information with me," Grantaire replies. He may be enamored already but that doesn't mean he's going to make this easy. "I stole Courfeyrac's phone, kindly gave it back, and then was escorted to this fine establishment. Between you and me, Apollo, I think your friends are up to something illegal."

Courfeyrac laughs. The blond man frowns. 

"Apollo?"

"If no one’s telling me their names I'm going to have to make them up. Your friend over here I'm just calling glasses."

"His names Combeferre, and you could have come up with something more creative." Apollo does not seem amused.

"And yours?"

"Enjolras."

"He got past my passcode," Courfeyrac says, drawing Enjolras's eyes away from Grantaire’s face. He feels their absence instantly. 

"Hacker?"

"He says he guessed it. Told me our cipher is terrible, asked about the blueprints. Said we should stop underestimating our enemies."

Enjolras opens his mouth to ask a question and Combeferre stops him before he can get a word out. 

"He says he isn't working for anyone."

Enjolras stares at him again. Keeps staring. 

"What do you do?" he asks after what feels like a century.

"I’m a painter." No one looks convinced. "And a thief. But that's more of a hobby."

"And a code breaker?" Combeferre asks. 

"Not really," Grantaire shrugs. "I used to do art forgeries for this sketchy guy. Neither of us liked each other very much, and it seemed like it was only a matter of time before he turned on me and the cops came calling. I figured I would benefit from learning what he and his cronies were saying."

"They used a dice cipher?" Courfeyrac asks. 

"No, they're not idiots. No offense. They used a combination of different things, it was a decent system. But I was curious, they were assholes, and the lock on their office door was easy to pick."

"So you snuck into their office, learned their code, and read through their secret documents?"

"More or less. It took a long time."

"How long?" This time Enjolras asks the question. 

"A week, maybe a little more."

All three men laugh. Grantaire looks at the floor, embarrassed. 

"R," Courfeyrac says when he's caught his breath, "that is insane. You cracked their code in a week?"

Grantaire shrugs. 

"I didn't have a lot else going on at the time."

That isn't strictly true, but he's not going to tell them about shaking on the bathroom floor and almost throwing up all over the ledgers and notebooks he had smuggled back to his apartment. He isn't going to tell them that running his fingers over pages of code kept him from calling his dealer, or that he read book after book on the subject because he’d fallen in love with puzzles, even ones he didn’t understand. 

"What did you do once you cracked it?" Combeferre asks. He seems genuinely interested. 

"I put their books back, stole the thousand dollars that they owed me, and moved to Paris. They were gonna turn me in when I finished the piece I was working on. So I took that too."

He’d been recreating a Hilma af Klint painting and hadn’t wanted them to have it. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to save himself at the time, but he was determined to save the canvas. It’s tucked beside the bookshelf in his apartment now, and he peeks at it sometimes before bed. He may not be good enough to come up with something like that, but he did recreate it beautifully.

"You didn't turn him in?" Courfeyrac asks.

Grantaire shakes his head. 

"I'm not a piece of shit. Besides, he'll get caught on his own soon enough. His other artists are awful, it's only a matter of time before someone notices."

"Who was it?" Enjolras asks. 

Grantaire bites his lip. He knows he shouldn't say, shouldn't just give up information like this. But he likes Courfeyrac and he more than likes Enjolras and Combeferre seems okay and this night has already been so goddamn weird. 

"Thénardier.”

All three men laugh again, even harder this time. 

"What?" he asks, face burning red. 

"It's just – the Thénardier family. You do know that their operation is bigger than forgery right?"

"Figured that out as soon as I could read their books," he replies. He's starting to wish he could leave this room, getting claustrophobic as he grips the arms of the chair. "I wanted to be mixed up with them even less than I wanted to be their scapegoat."

"They're gonna kill you, man," Courfeyrac says with a little shake of his head. "Thénardier isn't famous for controlling his temper."

"We might be able to help you, though." Combeferre has pressed his fingertips together like a Bond villain, though the look is hardly threatening on him. 

"How's that?"

"His daughter works for us sometimes,” Courfeyrac offers. Grantaire wonders how he and Combeferre are so easily on the same page, wonders if Enjolras is there with them too. “She's trying to distance herself from his operation. You do a little something for us and we'll ask her to feed him bad info about your whereabouts."

"What’s the little something?" Grantaire asks. He already knows he’ll say yes, knows he wants to stop looking over his shoulder every minute he’s outside. Knows that now he’s seen Enjolras he’ll do anything to be in a room with him again.

"Help us come up with a better code,” Courfeyrac says. “Something not so easily cracked."

Grantaire looks at Courfeyrac and Combeferre, the easy intelligence and bright-eyed awareness they both have that makes him think they’re probably good at whatever they do. He looks at Enjolras, who’s staring at him intently. Grantaire wishes he could unravel that look as easily as he unraveled their cipher, as easily as he’d gotten access to Courfeyrac’s phone. 

"Sure,” he tells them, forcing himself to look away from Enjolras at last. “And you can call me Grantaire."

**Author's Note:**

> the painting grantaire was forging & ended up stealing was The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood, Group IV


End file.
